Independence. The apparent need for children to be as independent as possible from their caregivers, as early as possible, is littered throughout our western social norms, parenting advice and educational & child care establishments. It starts early with some "experts" advocating for very young babies to be independently self soothing to sleep. The internet is full of "age appropriate" lists of things that your child should be independently doing by a particular age. This is

It used to take us a very long time to leave the house. With two PDA children, getting everyone onboard, meeting all needs, getting all preparations done and everyone out, without precipitating overload, was a challenging, patience requiring, and time consuming task. Those days are, largely, in our past. However, I was reminded this week of those times, and it made me revisit my strategies from that period. Let me set the scene from this week. The weather has been glorious, w